Hello! Hola! Привет! 안녕하세요!
My name is Hannah Faulkner and I am a rising fourth-year student (where has the time gone?!) here at the University of Pittsburgh. Coming from a small town in North Texas, I credit foreign language classes and cross-cultural education as the impetus for the expansion of my worldview and the kindling of a lifelong passion for language learning, area studies, and cultural and diplomatic exchange. Throughout my academic career I have sought to synthesize my affinity for conjugating verbs with a desire to further my understanding of the complicated and multifaceted Eastern European, Central, and East Asian regions. In particular I am interested in cybersecurity, intellectual property issues, regional security studies, and international business law. I am majoring in Russian and double minoring in Korean and Administration of Justice. Additionally, I am pursuing certificates in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies and Asian Studies.
When I don’t have my nose in a book or a Quizlet vocabulary set, I love to cook, embroider, and cafe-hop. I have to say that while accessing better recipes from around the world is not my only motivation to study foreign languages, it sure does help. A desire to be able to cook Korean recipes at the beginning of quarantine is one of many reasons that I decided to take the plunge and seriously begin my Korean language and cultural studies.
And what a journey my Korean language studies has taken me on. I think that I have been a casual object of the Korean wave’s effectiveness for over a decade now, but it wasn’t until I took a Russian language class my first year at Pitt that I began to consider where Korean could take me. The professor of that course is Uzbek but ethnically Korean, and her and I would often chat about the Korean language, her sister’s life in Korea, and how Korean language study can compliment Russian language study in a very unique way. These little conversations planted important seeds in my psyche, and at the beginning of quarantine the time was ripe to buckle down and begin.
Two years later, this series of events has now led me to a semester of exchange at Korea University in Seoul, South Korea. I will be taking courses on international commerce, Korean trade policies, Korean language, and Russian media culture. My goal this semester is to synthesize my interests professionally and academically, while also challenging myself personally with living for an extended period of time in a very unfamiliar place. I anticipate challenges and triumphs, and plenty of tteokbokki and bubble tea. Any challenge is better with bubble tea on the side, in my opinion.
The Korean words that I learned while avoiding an oral exam with Professor Kim in my freshman year Russian course, or that I studied during quarantine, or that I learned in the two years of formal Korean classes at Pitt with a different Professor Kim are now uniquely important in my everyday life. I am looking forward to seeing how other pieces of life experience piece together in an increasingly vibrant patchwork of serendipitous happenings.